I hope everyone had a relaxing and reflective weekend. I have been on a sustained several day stretch of doing jack shit. My big adventures were making several runs to Lowes because they have had a sale on mulch of five bags for ten bucks, and since I didn’t do a delivery this year- every couple of years I have a truck of it dumped out back, on off years I just get a few bags here and there. So that was just too good of a deal to pass up, even though the plastic waste pisses me off.
In other news, I may have a lead on some free pine mulch, because a massive tree a couple houses over was hit by lighting and cracked down the middle. It was weird- it had stopped raining and was overcast still, then out of nowhere, an explosion. I went out onto the porch and chatted with the neighbors and no one saw smoke or anything on fire or fallen, so we all headed back in. Turns out a massive pine had been hit and cracked down the middle:
That happened on Friday, and then I guess last night the wind broke it in half and it fell:
I slept through it falling of course, and only noticed today when I was coming home from Lowes. At any rate, the entire alley is closed down and I spose a tree service will be out and about some time this week to clean it up.
Other than that, not much of anything. I have managed to grow a pimple the size of a shooter marble on my forehead, my sinuses have blowed up, and I’m on season 2 of the Boys and playing Horizon Forbidden West. Wish I had something informative or interesting to say, but I just don’t.
Another Scott
Signs of life are always appreciated.
Good luck with the free pine straw! Hang in there with the other stuff.
Cheers,
Scott.
J. Arthur Crank
No burn marks? That is indeed odd. Maybe water inside the tree expanded rapidly and caused a rupture, but one would think burn marks would be made.
Is that someone’s gas meter by that tree? Falling debris could do some serious damage there.
NotMax
Swore of The Boys after the first season. Barely made it through that without repeatedly upchucking due to the increasingly gratuitous displays of violence. As always, YMMV.
;)
WaterGirl
No wonder you were cranky earlier.
edit: i had to google to find out whether a shooter marble is bigger or smaller than a regular marble. (bigger!)
That’s quite an accomplishment! Maybe you are re-entering your adolescent years.
NotMax
Random idle thought. Can the plastic be repurposed as ground cover in the raised beds?
Steeplejack
I keep thinking this is Sunday. Holiday disorientation.
Suzanne
You can use one of those KILLA patches on the pimple and it will shrink overnight. It’s like overnight smite.
Steve in the ATL
@Steeplejack: you missed church and Jesus is furious. Hellfire and dam nation heading to NoVa!
bbleh
Nasal steroid spray for allergy / virus symptoms. Generic OTC / off-the-shelf. Amazing.
Otherwise, holiday weekend, waddaya waddaya. Just be glad you’re not trying to fly somewhere.
lowtechcyclist
@Steeplejack:
The schools over here had Friday off as well as today, so I’ve really been disoriented. Guess the kid and I will have to set our alarms for the a.m.: him to try to wake up, me to get up to wake him up when his nearly 17 year old body quite sensibly wants to be asleep at 5:30am.
There’s only a ton of science showing that teens need to sleep longer and later, and nobody pays a damn bit of attention to it. So the bus shows up at 6:30am.
lowtechcyclist
@Steve in the ATL:
Dunno about hellfire and damnation, but we’re under a tornado watch all through No.Va. and central and southern MD.
Of course that might could’ve been what you meant.
ETA: Other than weddings and funerals, I’ve missed church for 25 straight years, over 1300 straight Sundays! JC seems to be OK with it though.
Steeplejack
@Steve in the ATL:
I’ll make it up at the Wednesday night prayer meetin’.
MattF
Suddenly got dark outside. Thunder. Resisting the urge to go to the window and watch.
Steve in the ATL
@lowtechcyclist: of course he doesn’t want YOU there—he has a brand to protect!
Steve in the ATL
@Steeplejack: PTL!
Kristine
Tripped over this story on Threads about the RC offshoot that Butker belongs to.
QAnon with crucifixes.
As an aside, the coding in this article does not play well with Safari. Scroll bar would not work, but the 🔽 key did. I couldn’t even highlight the bit I wanted to copy/paste. I had to open the article in Chrome.
Miki
St Paul did for decades what too many cities did and planted the same trees all along the boulevards, which looked pretty as they matured until they all either reached early maturity and got weak at the same time so crashed in storms or became diseased all at the same time.
My block was planted with Linden trees that have been rotting from the inside out, making them really weak, and causing them to topple in strong storms regularly for the past 5 years. One of them that was blown down onto the street was almost silent as its crown muffled any crash. It was the darndest thing. My near neighbors have all had property damage from the trees.
Last winter the block east of me had all of its magnificent ash trees removed. Necessary, but heartbreaking.
The city has planted new trees on the boulevard, and they’re all different. It’s a start. But the best thing is my city recognizes, respects, promotes, and pays for trees. That’s how it should be.
Spanky
@lowtechcyclist: There’s a line of storms forming up west of DC. Looks like Steep will get hit in about 20 minutes. Probably hit us after dark. Yay.
Traveller
Well, I think the writing and images of the shattered tree were quite interesting….kind of helped fill my day, So Thank You. Best Wishes, Traveller
Scout211
That finally got fixed in California a few years ago. High Schools can’t start earlier than 8:30 and middle schools no earlier than 8:00.
Jay
@NotMax:
not really. It does not let water through, either way, and quickly, (for plastic) degrades under UV rays.
Quite a few weeds will punch through it in no time.
In raised beds, just a thick coating of mulch, (when we lived on the Coast, we used low acid and tannins, leaf mulch, semi composted in open wire cages, in the interior, semi composted straw, ( not hay, hay has seeds)).
In the spring or fall, those mulches can just be dug in to enrich the soil, or “raked” off and stored in a dry place for use next year.
Weeds will pop up through the mulch, (but fewer than bare soil) but are easily removed as mulches like those, when dug in, keep the soil, light and airy.
They also make it easy for perennials to expand their growth outwards and multiply.
MomSense
Yesterday we moved a storage room and a half, including 4 kayaks, a motorcycle and sooo many boxes including boxes of books. We ended up putting almost everything in the barn because we neglected to rent a dolly and were in too far to drive all the way to Uhaul to pick one up.
This was just moving the stuff that the movers couldn’t fit in their truck. Movers are Wednesday. Then a lot of unpacking. Still have to deal with my mother’s storage room which is full of antiques that didn’t fit in the condo. There is a lion witch sized wardrobe in there.
Today I slept for about 5 hours and I really needed the rest. My back has aged in the last 15 years. My brain may think I’m 25 but my back is not playing along.
lowtechcyclist
@Scout211:
Good for California!
Just 12 more days in this school year, and one of them is a late arrival, so the time’s a-comin’ when I can sleep late. The kid’s still gotta find himself a summer job, but if it’s anything retail, he’ll at least be able to sleep a couple hours later than he does now.
Steeplejack
@Spanky:
I got an NWS alert on my phone and zoomed in on the map. Threadkill Lane is just barely outside the projected storm area. But close enough that I’m sure I’ll get some action.
RevRick
Besides getting in my daily steps and litter pickup, I colored a couple Art selections on our Happy Color app, cleaned the bathroom, and rewatched Saving Private Ryan.
I do have a couple of homework assignments coming up. First, is to draft some one, five, and ten year plans for our church to make us more climate/environmental friendly. Second, is to reread Alain de Botton’s The Consolations of Philosophy. Third, is to find a rental storage unit so that we actually do have a basement and a garage.
Tomorrow morning I will join some Lutheran colleagues in a Bible pericope study group, based on the Revised Common Lectionary, Wednesday morning I will attend a workshop on how churches can help provide affordable housing, and Wednesday evening the spousal unit and I will drive down to the Philly suburbs to hear our granddaughter’s Spring choral concert. We will enjoy Taco Tuesday on Wednesday with them.
Jackie
KABOOM!💣💥🧨
lowtechcyclist
@MomSense:
Well phrased. :-)
Our heat pump died a few years ago, and while we were waiting for the new one, I bought some window units to tide us over. I also had the smarts to buy a dolly at the same time, because window units are heavy suckers. I won’t say it was the best $50 I’ve ever spent, but it’s probably in the top five. My back has been thanking me ever since, because I’ve used it far more often than I would have thought. 12-packs of sodas, 35 pound bags of cat litter, it’s rare that a week goes by that I don’t have a use for it.
Since it looks like your days of moving stuff from Point A to Point B are far from over, I’d recommend owning one. Doesn’t have to be a heavy-duty one, even my Home Depot $50 dolly can move proverbial mountains.
Kristine
@RevRick:
I love that app! I’m currently coloring a Mary Cassatt painting. I do like the Art selections. I also liked the Marvel comics panels—I bought a few of the packs and downloaded them before the Marvel section got pulled a month or two ago.
I kinda wish they’d offer an ad-free paid sub, though. oyally kick of the Monopoly Go guy.
RevRick
@MomSense: I can sympathize with the back issues. Last summer I was on the toilet when I was hit with a wicked bout of sciatica. I could barely get up, and the pain drove me first, to my knees, then to flat on my stomach. That led to a trip to the ER. The next night a second bout when I was in bed; the EMTs got me downstairs so I could go to the spine center later that morning. They took an X-ray of my back, and lo and behold, I have scoliosis and arthritis of the lower back. Needless to say I do my back exercises religiously.
RevRick
@Kristine: I did that one this morning! They used to only drop on Thursday but now on Monday too.
prostratedragon
Oh, Bill Walton died? Guess I’m late to this news. Sorry to hear, R.I.P.
Nukular Biskits
The neighborhood where I’m living now really likes pinestraw for mulching. I have to admit I’d rather use it than cypress mulch in the beds next to the house (termites LOVE wood-based mulches). Problem is that pinestraw is a PIA to lay out in the beds.
So, I built a “box” out of a sheet of 1/4″ plywood for the bottom and some 2x8s for the sides, throw the bales in there, and run over it with the gas-powered mulching mower. The resulting mulch is a lot easier to put around plants .
And, yes, I tend to over-engineer just about everything I do.
Steeplejack
@Steeplejack:
Okay, getting some pretty hard rain now, with (mercifully distant) thunder. Still think I’m on the northern edge. (I’m around Seven Corners.)
Mousebumples
Picked up 1 bag of top soil (more like mud, lol) and 1 of mulch today. The soil was for a blackberry bush we’d planted last week. I thought I had a deep enough hole, but all the rain of the past week eroded enough away that the roots were exposed and it didn’t look happy. Added some mulch, too, but most of the mulch went to an apple tree that’s doing well after a week or two of acclimating to being purchased and planted.
Definitely need to get more mulch in the flowerbeds, but that might be a next year thing. We’ll see…
Steeplejack
@Steeplejack:
And the rain has abruptly stopped. I guess the front is moving pretty fast, or my edge was.
Jackie
@Steeplejack: {{{Stay safe!!!}}}
bbleh
@Steeplejack: “my edge moves fast!” [70s James Bond action chord]
MomSense
@lowtechcyclist:
I just put one in my Lowe’s cart! I also need to buy a new wheelbarrow but I think I need to try it out first.
@RevRick:
The delivery of my youngest messed up m SI joint. I managed to do pretty well with exercise, stretching, and occasional osteopathic manipulation until the last almost two years. I have some arthritis and a minor herneated disc. It’s a constant battle.
NotMax
@Steeplejack
A bit of rain tuneage.
:)
Another Scott
@Kristine: DW.com has been like that for me on Chrome on Winders. Ctrl-Shft-R refreshes the page and brings the scroll bar back. Mostly. (Shift-Refresh button doesn’t seem to work as reliably. Weird.)
Folks seem determined to break the WWW these days. :-/
Cheers,
Scott.
Kelly
Gonna watch the last 2 season 2 episodes of Sweet Tooth on Netflix. Really like it. Excellent characters, OK story. 3rd and final season drops June 6th.
MomSense
@NotMax:
Here is one I think you will like – Bob Dylan’s Theme Time Radio. First episode is “weather”.
Bob Dylan’s Theme Time Radio Hour – Episodes #01-05 : Radio FREE Crockett : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive
Kristine
@Another Scott:
Safari just keeps getting worse and worse. I tend to think it’s because Apple prioritizes iOS over MacOS. Happy to be wrong.
I do use an ad blocker on Safari, and I often wonder if messed-up scrolling etc is revenge for blocking ads.
J. Arthur Crank
@lowtechcyclist: Harbor Freight had a parking lot sale a few years back. Among the items was a solid dolly for $36. As you said, it was wise investment.
Kelly
My brother went to a memorial gathering this weekend for one of his powerline construction buddies. He chose to be composted. His resulting mulch was in several compostable bags. Buried them in his backyard beneath an oak sapling. His cross is an 8 foot power pole with an industry standard crossbar and insulators. My brother said he was as if Jeff Bridges”The Dude” was a lineman.
NotMax
@MomSense
Nice find!
Steve in the ATL
@Kristine:
Ugh so true. Last time, we saw only four of the big five. And after getting all those shots! Don’t even get me started on the great migration.
NB: it’s possible I have misunderstood your post.
Steeplejack
@NotMax:
Great song! Also this one.
Steve in the ATL
@Kelly: that is awesome
Matt McIrvin
Memorial Day weekend, this and every year, is also my birthday weekend, so the celebration always has this somber edge to it, but on the other hand I do get a long weekend for my birthday. We went to Canobie Lake Park on Saturday and I rode my favorite local rides. It seemed like the crowds were light, but that was probably just because it was the weekend the waterpark section opened for the summer and everyone was crammed in there (I did not partake). Temperatures were moderate enough that I’m not sure I would have wanted to go in the water anyway. It was a spectacular day with lovely blue skies.
Today was misty with a few sprinkles of rain, but they still held the Memorial Day parade that was one of my daughter’s last band performances before graduating from high school (that happens on Friday). I managed to grill the meat for my own birthday celebration, being the local grilling specialist; it was pretty tasty.
mrmoshpotato
Quick thunderstorm just blew through. Nothing like the DUMPING on Chicago’s northern burbs last night.
Looking forward to more storms tomorrow.
frosty
@MomSense:
Skip the wheelbarrow and get a 4-wheel garden cart. We have one that will tip up to dump the contents. I find wheelbarrows to be almost unmanageable when they’re full.
Jackie
@Matt McIrvin: Happy Birthday!
Kelly
Maybe reconsider where the fill line is ;-)
schrodingers_cat
@Matt McIrvin: Happy Birthday
Another Scott
@Matt McIrvin: Sounds like a good day!
HBD2U, and congrats on the spawn’s graduation!
Cheers,
Scott.
NotMax
@Matt McIrvin
Have a happy!
frosty
@MomSense: @RevRick: You should both get the book that Valued Commenter Raven recommended awhile back: Crooked, by Catherine Jakobsen Ramin. She’s an investigative reporter with back issues so she investigated and looked into everything that could help. The first half is chapters of everything that doesn’t work. The second is what works – no big surprise, but it works out to be different forms of posture and exercise (Tai Chi, Qui Gong, etc for example).
I’m currently doing the stretches and weights my PT gave me a couple years back to correct “postural dysfunction”. Also known as Tech Neck, treated by get your ass out of the recliner and stop staring at your phone.
Steeplejack
@Matt McIrvin:
Happy birthday! 🎉🎁🎂🥂
Princess
@Kristine: As awful as Butker’s remarks on women were in his speech, the rest of his speech was almost worse. The part about women infuriated everyone. He also managed to be deeply antisemitic. And Catholics I know are incredibly angry on his schismatic take on the church, including his attack on Biden. To me, the speech had Opus dei fingers all over it. Someone wrote it for him and expected it to go viral, as it has done.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
The City of Denver can fuck things up and screw longtime residents w/o thinking twice but it has this great “free mulch” day once a year. You can shovel it into your vehicle or, if you have a truck, they have front loaders.
I go every year with the Tacoma, first load is for us. I then go back for a second for my 76-year-old neighbor on one side, widower, who simply has never been able to keep up with her yard work since we moved here. So, I go over and weed, clear out shit and slowly mulch the perimeter of her lot.
The City’s free mulch thing is a godsend for this.
Liminal Owl
@Kristine: Thank you. A very good article about some groups that have usually stayed under the public radar.
Suzanne
I want to complain for a hot minute. Sports bras: why do they suck so much? I am sick of getting chafed to bleeding.
I have one that’s excellent. All the other ones are terrible.
Melancholy Jaques
@Scout211:
I’ve taught in both and I’d like to see it pushed another hour.
zhena gogolia
@Suzanne: I know, I don’t get it.
Liminal Owl
@Matt McIrvin: Hippo birdie two ewes!
Suzanne
@frosty: Dude. It is fucken true. I have a back injury from where a box fell on me when I was 18. Always hurt when I woke up and I was stiff and miserable. All the yoga I’ve been doing has, like, almost completely fixed it. That deep warrior three shit! Dancer pose and balancing half-moon and crow, man.
Plus I am 44 and I can do the splits again.
Jay
@frosty:
@Kelly:
They make 2 wheel wheelbarrows. They are much more stable and have some advantages over a 4 wheel cart.
Quite often with a traditional wheelbarrow, the issue is side tipping, often due to an unbalanced load or going around a corner.
Liminal Owl
@Princess: YES. Tentacles of what a friend calls the OctOpus. (Did you read the piece Kristine linked to?)
Suzanne
@zhena gogolia: It makes me crazy. Like, I just need everything to be really soft! None of these sharp metal bits or stiff seams. Arrrrrrgggggh.
And they’re like at least $70 for a good one, fuck.
J. Arthur Crank
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: San Diego County recently did the free mulch and free compost thing. We filled several dozen plastic bags (the 1 to 2 cubic feet bags that held manure, garden bed soil, mulch, etc from Home Depot) over several trips. It was strictly self service. It would probably have cost several hundred dollars to buy the same amount of compost and mulch from Lowe’s or Home Depot, so it was worth the labor.
BeautifulPlumage
@Matt McIrvin:
Happy B-Day!
@Suzanne:
the uniboob. I’m tired of underwires (I’m chunky/floofy/fat) and looking for comfy but work-appropriate ones
BeautifulPlumage
Aaaaaaand it’s now BJ After Dark…
Geminid
@frosty: Regarding wheelbarrows with heavy, unweldy loads, I was shown that grabbing the handles closer to the tub helps stabilize them. Choking up, so to speak. That still doesn’t make me like them, though.
MomSense
@Suzanne:
Have you tried dance wear? Sodanca makes great leotards and I believe they have an adult fitness line. Might be better than bras.
lowtechcyclist
@Matt McIrvin:
Is that where Obi-Wan Canobie is from? ;-)
Happy birthday!
MomSense
@Matt McIrvin:
Happy birthday!
Matt McIrvin
Thanks, everyone!
This weekend I realized that I’ve been working without a significant break since the New Year, with the only noteworthy adventure to break it up being the nutty day trip I took with my daughter to see the solar eclipse. She’s been so slammed with schoolwork and the college applications race that we haven’t even been able to do much that’s fun as a family on the weekends, and she’s going off to college in the fall, so time starts to feel short.
Anyway, I think the situation has been driving us all stir crazy. The news has been enervating but on top of that, I haven’t really been exercising self-care. My wife did take a week off to go to Montreal to see the World Figure Skating Championships when they were there, so she had one major break then.
But it took a weekend when we actually could catch a breath to realize how long the pressure had been on.
A week from today, a couple of days after my kid graduates, we are going to get on a plane and take a two-week trip to Japan (really, this is her major graduation present–she’s been dreaming of visiting Japan all her life). So now we’re going a little crazy trying to get everything together for that. But this adventure is also a break from the routine that we desperately need.
Suzanne
@MomSense: I need high-ass impact! It sucks! I need, like, structural engineering.
Suzanne
@Matt McIrvin: HBD! Enjoy the trip!
henqiguai
I live in Massachusetts, so maybe things are different in WV. I have been warned any number of times over the years that pine mulch is something to avoid in that it is apparently highly favored by ants. Normally I’m indifferent to ants since they help keep the ground broken up, but there are places where you really don’t want those lil’ buggers [sic] around select locations.
Kristine
@Liminal Owl: I was taken aback by the Dan Brownishness of it all. I’d heard of Opus Dei and was vaguely familiar with the Latin Mass crowd, but damn.
Wondering if Alito is caught up in this.
lowtechcyclist
@Steeplejack:
The rain arrived here several minutes ago. Doesn’t seem to be any wind with it, which was my main worry. I’m going to bed.
Kristine
@Matt McIrvin: Happy birthday! Glad you had a good day.
frosty
@Jay: The side tipping is what ruined wheelbarrows for me. The two-wheel one would be more stable, true. The other benefit of the cart is that I can PULL it. Lots easier for me to pull a loaded cart uphill than to push a wheelbarrow.
Thanks to everyone for chiming in!
Villago Delenda Est
A big ass tree split by lightning then falling in a windstorm sounds informative to me.
Another Scott
@Matt McIrvin: Japan’s an amazing place.
I was last there (in Nara) at the middle-end of May 2019 for a conference. I saw a few native people in masks, but didn’t think too much of it. A couple of days before heading home I got something (turned out to be influenza A). :-/ Don’t be paranoid, but keep your wits about you.
Have fun!
Cheers,
Scott.
frosty
Sounds like a much better kind of crazy though! Enjoy the trip and enjoy your break!
Kayla Rudbek
@Kristine: it’s to the point where I can’t use Safari on my iPhone anymore as it’s too slow to load. It’s still working all right on my iPad and desktop, though.
Matt McIrvin
@Another Scott: I’ve been thinking about at least masking on the flight to the extent that it’s practical, given some recent scientific results on COVID transmission. I’ve done that on a trans-Atlantic flight but not trans-Pacific. The longest journey I’ve taken up to now was a trip to Singapore riiiight when COVID was ravaging Wuhan in early 2020, and, guess what, I caught something on that trip. Probably wasn’t COVID.
Jackie
@Suzanne:
Buy several of the one that’s excellent. And get rid of the unworthy bras.
Another Scott
@Kayla Rudbek: I don’t know if this is common, but Safari was almost unusable on J’s iPhone and she asked me to look at it. It turned out that it was saving every place she had visited in some sort of history cache. It’s a “feature”. :-/ There must have been thousands of entries…
MacRumors.com – How to clear the Safari cache.
Once I deleted all that history cruft, it was usable again.
HTH a little!
Cheers,
Scott.
Jackie
@BeautifulPlumage:
Where have you been? It’s been BJ After Dark ALL DAY!😂
Jackie
@Another Scott: Bookmarked! Thanks for the tip!
Kayla Rudbek
@Kristine: he probably is. I wonder if it will be addressed at my college reunion this coming weekend, although Notre Dame regards Opus Dei as a rival for money and recruiting of priests so some of the men’s dorms would actually kick them out, although apparently the commander of the Air Force ROTC back when I was a student did like them.
Westyny
@MomSense: I, too, am in moving hell. Amazing how stuff accumulates.
Argiope
@Suzanne: For what it’s worth, I’ve been pretty happy with the Champion high-impact maximum support bra, measured carefully for correct sizing. I cycle more than I jog, but at least with this one, when I do jog, I don’t have to double up the sports bras to do it. Seems mostly non-diggy.
trollhattan
Is they got a fuckin’ gas meter next to their lightning rod of a tree?
I have further questions.
ETA learned in mountain safety training lightning can precede the storm by a dozen miles and the time to get off the ridge/summit is when you see the angry cloud in the distance, not wait for it to get realllly close. Having had a friend crackling when we were ridge hiking in Yosemite, I’ve been leery ever since.
Another Scott
@trollhattan: Camera lens playing tricks. The gas meter is 25 yards away. Like the willow.
Cheers,
Scott.
Suzanne
@Jackie: The one that’s good is pretty expensive (Brooks Dare). I am the type who waits for a Black Friday sale, not for Christmas, but just to buy all the stuff I’ve needed all year.
Maybe I’ll break down. I am getting scarring.
Steve in the ATL
@trollhattan: happened to me once, on Lions head mountain (next to Vail mountain). Was talking to my curly haired friend when we lightning struck nearby and his curly hair went straight. Scary but also hilarious.
We then hopped on our portable lightning rods (mountain bikes) and hustled down the mountain…passing a bear…and rode back to our house.
May have had a few beers after that.
CaseyL
@Suzanne: Do you need a lot of support? If ordinary support would be enough, have you ever heard of Coobies?
I threw away my underwired bras long before the pandemic, even, and just wear Coobies now. They make a sorta-sports-bra, with a wider back band. No wires anywhere. Most comfortable thing I’ve ever scooped my boobies into.
Poe Larity
What happens to birds in a lightning strike?
trollhattan
@Steve in the ATL:
Heh, one of those “We’re young and invinci…holy fuck dude, let’s bolt!” moments that in sum helped us achieve adulthood.
The Rockies especially seem to spin up afternoon thunderstorms regularly enough to set your watch. Can, uh, affect your backcountry trip planning scheme a little.
Kayla Rudbek
@Another Scott: thank you, it seems to be loading a bit more quickly now.
Suzanne
@CaseyL: I have, uhhhh, big boobs, narrow shoulders, and apparently a somewhat small ribcage? So when things are sized S/M/L, I usually don’t fit any of the sizes well. I have some low-impact sports bras that I got at Costco, and those are fine for yoga and weights and stuff…..but I’ve been running a lot, distances up to 15 miles. And that is where I’m having more trouble.
Matt McIrvin
@Princess: I think part of the intended effect of it is to make everyone think “I guess this is how we are now, we’ve collectively decided to embrace theocratic tyranny and everyone just needs to suck it up.” Part of me is a little surprised there’s as much pushback as there is.
Sister Golden Bear
@Kristine: Fascinating and scary read.
Suzanne
@Argiope: Do the straps fall down? I have that issue at times. Some of them let you unhook them and then rehook with the X-back.
trollhattan
Answer to “which is larger, a Tardis or a college girl’s apartment?” has been answered. Sorry Doctor, but you’re in second place on this one.
Total of [goes to second hand] six carloads so far and there are one or two left.
Matt McIrvin
@trollhattan: The most ambitious mountain hiking I ever did was when I tried to climb Longs Peak in the late 80s. That was when I discovered that even if I’ve been acclimating at high-ish altitude all summer, I kind of hit a wall somewhere above 13,000 feet where I start feeling drunk and I don’t trust my judgment. And I also recall seeing that angry cloud way off in the distance and being told by the rangers to get the hell down, which we fortunately agreed to do forthwith and didn’t run into any trouble. So I didn’t summit Longs Peak, not quite.
Many many years later I rode the cogwheel train up to the top of Pikes Peak and, oh yeah, it’s that drunk feeling again. But I wasn’t doing anything risky that time.
Sister Golden Bear
@Matt McIrvin: Happy Birthday!
Soprano2
@Steeplejack: Hope it’s not anything like the storms that came thru here yesterday. Some of the pics I’ve seen are stunning and terrifying – actual funnels, for one, and hail larger than a quarter. We were lucky, all it did here was rain some.
Anyway
@Matt McIrvin:
Happy Birthday! Trip to Japan sounds fantastic.
Steeplejack
@Soprano2:
No, all I got in Falls Church was hard rain for 10 or 15 minutes. No wind, which was good. I think the storm passed just south of me, going west to east.
Soprano2
@Suzanne: I get most of mine at Victoria’s Secret. YYMV, I get the high impact ones. The ones you pull over your head should count as a workout when you take them off. 🤣🤣🤣
eclare
Got my power back around 12:30 this afternoon. Reading the local news, a massive tree fell in my neighborhood, and it sounds like that was the cause.
Since I had been up since around 12:30 am, I promptly took a seven hour nap. Although, is seven hours really a nap? Or should it be called a sleep?
Glad to have power back.
scav
@Princess: Well, that and everybody’s second career and/or side hustle seems to involve being a shock influencer.
Steeplejack
@eclare:
Congrats! On the power and the sleep. Seven hours is not a nap.
Soprano2
@Suzanne: I’m impressed, I cannot do crow at all or full dancer – my lower back is too stiff for that. I agree that yoga helps, though. Twists help me more than anything. Give me cow-faced legs any day!
Soprano2
@Suzanne: Victoria Secret had a good one recently with no underwire. I’m thinking of getting another one like it.
Mousebumples
@Suzanne: I hate the “pull over your head” styles. I have a zip up in front one I love right now, and have used ones that clip in the back before. I’d have to look at the brand later for my current zip fave, but I got it at Kohl’s on sale, lol.
Definitely feel like some are not designed or tested on actual women before launch lol.
@MomSense: won’t speak for anyone else, but I need more support than I can get from sportswear. For me, 2 kiddos + breastfeeding has made me more busty than I was prepregnancy.
Origuy
@Kristine: “…the Devil hates Latin.” So did generations of English public schoolboys, but that’s no reason to bring back the Latin Mass.
Chacal Charles Calthrop
@eclare: any food survive?
Joey Maloney
Only here to say, John’s story points out how living in the Middle East is different. John hears a big explosion: lightning hitting a tree. Yesterday morning I heard a big explosion: car bomb. About half a klick from my house. Cops say it was criminal, not political, so if true that’s a relief.
Steeplejack
@Joey Maloney:
Bummer! Stay safe, dude.
eclare
@Chacal Charles Calthrop:
We’ll see about the half and half. I assume freezer stuff is good.
Last summer I lost everything when power was out for four days. This shit gets old.
Sorry to be a bummer.
tomtofa
@Suzanne: Amazon has the zip version for $32 currently – 54% off.
Chris T.
@J. Arthur Crank:
Lightning is weird.
It’s almost certainly due to exploding pine sap, and microscopic examination of the wood might show tiny burn marks, but you never really know. The main burning takes place where resistance rises, in this case probably deep into the root system.
Chris T.
@RevRick: The human back “design” is a nightmare of a joke. I can squat hundreds of pounds, but getting a spoon out of a dishwasher is enough to throw my back out….
Chris T.
@frosty:
Phones are worst but just regular computers can be pretty bad. Raise that screen!
(I have several corrective exercises in my gym regimen.)
Chris T.
@Suzanne:
Designed by men?
Tehanu
@Matt McIrvin:
Happy birthday, and congrats to your daughter. My weekend thrills were going to the grocery store, having my son & grandson come over for a few hours on Saturday, deciding which charities I’m going to get matches for from my job, finally getting around to filing last year’s bills, and making Cornish game hens & stuffing and gravy for dinner tonight. Well, we take our little victories where we can. Glad you enjoyed your holiday!
wjca
@Suzanne:
Chris
Maybe originally. But there’s a long history of bad design, going back centuries. For instance, why do most bras fasten in the back, when it would obviously be more convenient to have them fasten in the front? Because they descend from corsets, which fastened (laced up) in the back — which was not a problem, because a lady would have a maid to deal with it.
Matt McIrvin
@lowtechcyclist: It’s pronounced “CANobie,” stress on the first syllable. But my mother calls it “Kenobi Lake Park” too.
It’s a small and charming family-owned amusement park, and there’s another one of those in Pennsylvania called Knoebels. Videos about them often get auto-transcribed such that from the subtitles you can’t tell whether they’re talking about Knoebels or Canobie.
Argiope
@Suzanne: They haven’t for me, but I’m a broad-shouldered build with a higher outer shoulder cap than where the straps sit. They’d have a difficult time making it over that hump. This is one of those “if men had X” situations–I feel like there would be bespoke sports bra outlets everywhere competing for business and insurance would cover it.
Argiope
@trollhattan: I’m super late to this thread but I truly feel your pain and also LOLing. My living room is full of baskets, boxes….where WAS it all?
evodevo
@Matt McIrvin: Yep…Cripple Creek (Elevation ~9000+ ft) was where I encountered that physiological reaction..we were walking along the street and I felt like I had just had a half pint of vodka or something…we later spent the night camping out at 8-9k feet and I spent the night waking up panting.